ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. – Peaceful protests continue in Elizabeth City Tuesday night nearly one week after Andrew Brown Jr. was shot by a Pasquotank County sheriff’s deputy while deputies served a search warrant.
The demonstrations continued after 8 p.m., which is when the curfew was put into effect throughout the city. It lasts until 6 a.m.
Right at 8 p.m., police were telling everyone to go home, especially protesters who have been out for much of the day.
“We have a problem with that curfew because we’ve shown great restraint.”
Some people are concerned about the curfew.
“More infuriated than anything. We haven’t done anything wrong,” said Arianna, who lives in Elizabeth City.
Folks like Arianna say they're marching for the body camera footage from Brown's incident to be released.
“Unedited. The full footage for the family. They’ve been disrespected for a week straight now. All we want is for them to be able to see the footage and understand what happened to their son, to their father,” she said.
Forty-two-year-old Brown was shot and killed on April 21 as Pasquotank County sheriff’s deputies were serving a warrant on felony drug charges.
Since his death, peaceful protests have gone on each day in Elizabeth City, calling for transparency and the release of body cam footage taken during the incident.
On Monday, Brown's family and their attorneys were able to view 20 seconds of the body cam video,and family members said the it was an execution. Civil rights attorney Ben Crump said they do not feel like they got transparency. He said they only saw part of the video and claimed that officials wanted to have two of Brown's family members with no legal counsel present at first.
Attorneys are now calling to see all of the footage they say was taken at the scene and released their own independent autopsy report Tuesday, stating Brown suffered a "kill shot to the back of the head."
Meanwhile, there’s growing anticipation for a Wednesday morning court hearing for a media coalition regarding the release of that body camera footage.
Elon University School of Law professor Steve Friedland believes there may be efforts to change to the state law concerning body camera footage.
“I think they're likely will be efforts to modify this law, to make it easier for the public to see videos for people who are also family members to see more of the videos and perhaps with fewer issues in the system before they get a chance to view it,” Friedland told News 3.
Earlier Tuesday, the FBI Charlotte Field Office announced a federal civil rights investigation into the shooting is underway.
We’ll bring you the latest developments from Wednesday’s hearing on air and online.
